Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/27

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Now, having seen the utter failure of the dual union program of the concious minorities, let us examine the drift of the conservative masses towards industrial unionism, for as yet it can hardly be called a concious movement.

Like the radical minority elements, the great body of railroad men have responded to the oppression of the railroad companies. But their manner of doing so has been vastly different. It is not their method to throw away their old unions, built through so much stress and struggle, and to begin all over again on a supposedly perfect basis as the dual unionists have so long urged them to do. No, they are far too sluggish for that. Their way is the evolutionary way, the way followed almost universally by workers in improving their organizations, and the one taken by the railroad companies in building up their own power. They have no plan or theory, but move pretty much as circumstances imperatively dictate. As they sense the need for more united action they build up and extend their old unions and then strike up closer and closer affiliations with sister organizations. The general result is a constant and steady, even if unrecognized, approach to the industrial form.

This unceasing evolution has gone on for many years, in fact from the very inception of railroad unionism. The stages making it up are many and complicated. Beginning with a whole series of primitive and isolated local unions, the organization has constantly marched on expanding and developing until it has reached its present condition of sixteen more or less loosely federated national craft unions covering the whole railroad industry. These unions are: Engineers (B. of L. E.), Firemen (B. of L. F. & E.), Conductors (O. R. C.) Trainmen (B. of R. T.), Switchmen (S. U.